19th Century Boston was a riotous town, and in past episodes, we’ve examined everything from anti-draft riots to anti-catholic riots to anti-immigrant riots that took place in this city in the 19th century. The incident on Washington Street on October 21, 1835 was different, however. Where most of Boston’s 19th century riots erupted from street violence among and directed by the working classes, the mob’s attack on the Female Anti Slavery Society and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was led by a group characterized as “gentlemen of property and influence.” Enraged by the audacity of radical calls for immediate abolition, this mob of respectable gentlemen broke down the doors, scattered members of the Female Anti Slavery Society, nearly lynched William Lloyd Garrison, and inspired abolitionist leader Maria Chapman to exclaim, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere!”

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/260/

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When it came steaming into Boston Harbor 81 years ago this week, the fishing trawler Buskø was escorted by a Coast Guard cutter, with armed guards watching over her crew. The next day’s headlines declared that the US had captured a Nazi spy ship manned by Gestapo agents who were setting up secret bases in Greenland, but the truth turned out to be more complicated. The Busko was sailing under the Norwegian flag and manned by a Norwegian crew, yet their peaceful voyage to deliver supplies to isolated Norwegian hunters in the arctic was used to cover up Nazi intelligence gathering, so what would the fate of the ship be? And while war was raging in Europe, the United States was technically at peace, so on what charges were the Norwegian crew held at the East Boston immigration station?

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/259/

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Professor Charles R Gallagher’s recent book The Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front is an in depth accounting of an organization that was wildly popular in Boston and beyond in the years before the US entered World War II. The Christian Front was deeply rooted in Catholic doctrines, but the value at its core was a form of anticommunism that members treated as interchangeable with antisemitism. Professor Gallagher will tell us how the group was founded and how the doctrine of Catholic Action and the Mystical Body of Christ theory enabled their hateful ideology. He’ll also introduce the intellectual leaders of the group, the streetfighters who led it down the primrose path to paramilitarism, and the Nazi spymaster who turned the group toward treason.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/258/

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Professor Charles R Gallagher one of those multi-hyphenates who puts the rest of us to shame. He’s a professor of history, a Jesuit priest, and an award winning author. More specifically, he is a member of the Society of Jesus who teaches in the history department at Boston College, where he studies the history of right-wing movements, the intersection of intelligence and religion, American Catholicism, papal diplomacy, international relations, and the history of the Holocaust.

Make sure to check out his profile on the Harvard University Press site, which includes a more complete biography and has tons of links to his other media appearances about the book. You can buy the book using the widget below, or on Amazon, if you prefer.

The West End and the North Slope of Beacon Hill have gone through extreme transformations over time. At the turn of the 20th century, these neighboring communities welcomed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, though very few signs of those vibrant communities remain today. As the last of the purpose-built immigrant synagogues still standing in downtown Boston, the Vilna Shul is a unique building with a rich history of immigration, community, and the evolving American identity. Vilna Shul Executive Director Dalit Horn joins us this week to talk about the history and future of this unique synagogue.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/257/

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Prior to joining the Vilna, Dalit Horn served as the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Impact at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Dalit designed and implemented cutting edge and creative approaches to expand the Institute’s partnerships, educational and programmatic agendas, visibility and effectiveness. Prior to this role, Dalit served as Assistant Director at AJC’s Belfer Center for American Pluralism.

Dalit received a BA in History from Columbia University, a BA in Jewish Thought from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she studied management, leadership and organizational design. She is both an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and a Davidson Scholar. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and their two sons.

During the summer of 1775, when the siege of Boston was at its peak, about 1500 Pennsylvania Riflemen answered a call for volunteers. By the time they reached the American lines in Cambridge, expectations for these troops were through the roof. Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign engineered by John Adams, the New England officers commanding the troops around Boston believed that these fresh troops were capable of nearly everything. Their reputation was based in part upon the riflemen’s origins on the frontier, and in part on the advanced weaponry they carried. While they’re the status quo today, rifles were new to both armies that were facing off in Boston and nearly unheard of here in New England. However, fame went to these soldiers’ heads, and after only a couple of months on the front line, they were nearly ungovernable. They refused to take part in the regular duties of an American soldier, they staged jailbreaks when their comrades were locked up for infractions against military discipline, and on September 10th, they staged the first mutiny in the new Continental Army.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/256/

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Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church and the sea. TJ’s talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom longtime listeners will remember from past episodes. Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first, somewhat hapless, captain of the USS Constitution, and Captain Thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs that keep watch over the Old North sanctuary from the French. Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston’s population in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston’s maritime past, including many that we’ve discussed in past episodes.

Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this presentation with you.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/255/

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Cy Young Day, an exhibition game to celebrate the greatest pitcher of all time, was bracketed by days of sports celebration, from prizefighters in the squared circle to old time baseball in the Harbor Islands.  Held at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds on August 13, 1908, the Cy Young celebration drew a record crowd of 20,000 fans to the now long gone ballpark.  By this time, Young had been playing professional baseball for 20 years, and he was starting to slow down.  Nobody knew if the old Ohio farmboy would be playing for Boston when the 1909 season rolled around, so it seemed as if the whole city turned out to show the pitcher their love, and to make sure he would have a comfortable nest egg for his expected retirement.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/254/

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Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called “We Are One,” which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity. Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course. The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jones’ photos to one remarkable gold medal. Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revere’s hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston. What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal. It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it.

On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read. A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses. Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston. It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War. This illustrious medal’s journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knox’s cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederate’s dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/253/

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This week’s podcast is sponsored by Liberty & Co, who sell unique products inspired by the American Revolution. If you find yourself inspired by today’s episode, you might consider the Journal of Major George Washington. By the time the Washington Before Boston medal was presented, he was already first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. But before George Washington was a legend, he was a 21 year old min the Virginia militia. Dispatched by the governor in 1753 to deliver an ultimatum to the French who were encroaching on western lands, he returned instead with their flat refusal. Returning to the same area in what’s now Pennsylvania the next year, he stumbled blindly into a skirmish with a French patrol, accidentally setting off the global war we know as the seven years war or the French and Indian war.

Between those two expeditions, however, George Washington’s journal of the first journey was printed as a pamphlet in Virginia, and Liberty & Co offers a beautiful reproduction of the pamphlet, including a fold out map of the conflicting land claims on the frontier. If 18th century pamphlets aren’t your thing, you might like the Houdon bust of Washington that the obverse of the Washington Before Boston medal is based on.

Save 20% on any purchase with the discount code HUBHISTORY.